Energizing EDF Energy through Gamification

The Situation

The UK’s largest producer of low-carbon energy, EDF Energy, was looking for new, better ways to mobilize engagement across the organization. They recognized that unlocking the insight and knowledge within user communities was crucial to drive business performance. So Capgemini worked with EDF Energy to introduce gamification techniques that would help identify and develop innovative concepts.

Those concepts needed to save money or improve the organization’s performance. With multiple user communities in geographically diverse locations, improving collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst their Enterprise IT Strategy, Architecture and Change community was vital for EDF Energy.

There was no effective mechanism for idea sharing or knowledge transfer between offices spread across the UK, from Plymouth in the south, to Sunderland in the north. Enterprise Gamification, which is the use of game techniques to solve problems while motivating and engaging employees, was introduced as a way to overcome these challenges.

The Solution

Capgemini and EDF Energy introduced leaderboards to create an atmosphere of competition, used likes/dislikes to energize people in ways they recognized from social media, and published comments to drive debate and develop ideas, with the aim of the best ideas being developed into Mobile Applications.

Via a points system the best contributors’ teams and concepts were then recognized and rewarded. Interestingly, it was found that the best behaviors were driven by intrinsic factors such as peer recognition rather than extrinsic factors such as free devices.

To drive delivery, traditional project disciplines were critical. These were supplemented with strong Senior Executive commitment, as well as the momentum provided by the leaderboard challenges and transparency against the different categories: best team performance, best individual contribution and best idea.

The Result

The Mobile Apps that the community started to create were impactful due to the organizational insight and know-how that the team applied in identification and their development – ensuring they would work in an EDF Energy context. They were progressed to a point where thinking had been done around design, security issues, the people it touches and more. The top five ideas are now to be presented by the idea originators to a senior panel consisting of the CIO, and further IT and Business Functional Directors.

The gamification pilot changed behavior quickly and generated a genuine buzz in the group. 117 ideas were produced compared to 23 with a previous innovation approach. The feedback scores were over 97% in favour of using Gamification to drive behaviors and the results exceeded all of EDF Energy’s success criteria.

The top five Mobile App concepts were related to: key employee back office processing tasks; saving money and CO2 through Green Travel; streamlining employee induction; driving brand awareness and green behavior using an innovative customer game; and finally an App to drive LEAN behavior and process excellence understanding and adoption.

It tells us that these techniques work well, and work rapidly. Within a community with a diverse demographic spread and a significant potential resistance to change, these techniques genuinely delivered - cutting across internal boundaries, disparate locations, and formal grades to unlock more business focussed innovation ideas than traditional means. This experience with EDF Energy proves that digital tools and techniques such as gamification can accelerate and sustain the behavioral change required to make transformation stick in an organization.